Yahoo! shuts down Maps, GeoPlanet, Pipes, other tools

In a move to align resources to better suit its priorities, Yahoo! has decided to drop a kill on several of it tools like GeoPlanet, Pipes and its flagship Yahoo maps.

Yahoo during its “progress report” on “product prioritization” for Q2, announced that yahoo maps would be discontinued by the end of June after 8 years of existence.

“However, in the context of Yahoo search and on several other Yahoo properties including Flickr, we will continue to support maps. We made this decision to better align resources to Yahoo’s priorities as our business has evolved since we first launched Yahoo Maps eight years ago,” said Amotz Maimon, chief architect at the Sunnyvale, California-based company.

Yahoo has struggled to compete with Google and Apple in mapping, as directional navigation has shifted to smartphones and Yahoo has been slow to enter into the mobile market.

Yahoo Pipes, a web application that lets developers build data mashups that aggregate webpages and services, will go into read-only mode (no Pipes creation) on August 30. Pipes infrastructure will be shut down on September 30, giving developers some time to migrate their projects and data.

Yahoo! also plans to shut several of its regional programs like Yahoo Music in France and Canada, Yahoo Movies in Spain,Yahoo TV in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Canada, as well as Yahoo Autos in the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Yahoo Philippines homepage would also die come mid-June.

All these efforts follow CEO Marissa Mayer’s strategy to streamline the firms operations and revamp the company through acquisition and rejuvenation of its bag of services, having closed more than 60 products already by the beginning of 2015.